KASMENAI
Sicily.
The remains of an archaic
city on the plateau of Monte Casale, ca. 12 km to the
W of Palazzolo (ancient Akrai). A colony of Syracuse,
it was founded, according to Thucydides (
6.5.3), 90 years
after the mother city, ca. 643 B.C. Herodotos (
7.155）
reports that ca. 485 B.C. Gelon removed the Syracusan
Gamoroi from this city and brought them back to their
home city, from which they had been expelled by the
people in league with the slaves. A fragment of Philistos
(Jacoby, 3 B.559, fr. 5), as emended by Pais, affirms
that Kasmenai sided with Syracuse during its struggle
against the rebellious Kamarina and its Sikel allies in
553-552 B.C. And in 357 Dion, after landing at Heraklea
Minoa, seems to have recruited troops at Kasmenai on
his way to Syracuse (
Diod.Sic. 16.9.5). Insiguificant mentions of the colony occur also in Stephanos of Byzantium
and in scholia to Thucydides (
ed. Didot, p. 102).
On a plateau at the edge of Monte Casale are the ruins
of a circuit wall built with enormous blocks only roughly
shaped. It was ca. 3400 m in length, 3 m thick, with
external rectangular towers. Within the circuit the city
comprised at least 38 parallel streets (ca. 3 m wide),
running from NW to SE, with blocks usually no wider
than 25 m. The E-W traffic utilized alleys of irregular
width since the houses were aligned only along their N
side. This system appears at first glance comparable to
what is usually called per strigas, but it should be noted
that, although stenopoi are amply attested, this settlement
lacked proper orthogonal streets and especially major
traffic axes, the typical plateiai of the Hippodamian
cities. The four plateiai believed to have been identified
through aerial photography have not yet been confirmed
by systematic excavation. For the present the city must
be considered, on the basis of the test excavations, pre-Hippodamian in type, with a plan that can be dated, to
the second half of the 7th c. B.C.
The importance of the town's urban system for the
studies of Greek and particularly Sicilian city planning
lies in the very fact that it allows us to pinpoint between
the end of the 7th and the first half of the 6th c., the
transition, at least in the W, from the system with parallel streets to the more sophisticated Hippodamian type,
such as we see it at Selinus, Akragas, Metapontion, and
Poseidonia.
If in fact the Sicilian Greeks had already known the
system per strigas during the second half of the 7th c.,
it seems logical that they would have employed it at
Kasmenai, which started as a military colony and was
therefore almost “prefabricated,” thus offering the most
favorable conditions for realizing on the ground the ideal
model for urban planning.
The colony was started here on the natural penetration route of Syracuse toward the interior of the island
purely for military reasons, as is amply attested by the
powerful wall circuit already mentioned and by the large
quantity of iron weapons from the temenos of a temple
which excavations have brought to light in the W corner
of the plateau. From this early temple, part of the architectural and sculptural decoration in polychrome terracotta have been recovered and at least three inscriptions
from the 6th c. In the necropolis the cist and chamber
tombs are typically Greek. The city's main function as
a military colony ceased rather early and it apparently
ceased to exist at the end of the 4th c. B.C.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. Di Vita, “La penetrazione siracusana
nella Sicilia sud-orientale alla luce delle più recenti scoperte archeologiche,”
Kokalos 2 (1956) 177ff, 186-196
with previous bibl.; id.,
EAA 4 (1961) 329-30; id., “Un
contributo all'urbanistica greca di Sicilia: Casmene,”
Atti del Settimo Congresso Internazionale di Archeologia
Classica 2 (1961) 69-77; id., “Per l'architettura e l'urbanistica greca d'età arcaica: la stoa nel témenos del
Tempio C e lo sviluppo programmato di Selinunte,”
Palladio 17, 1-4 (1967) 46-47 and n. 183; L. H. Jeffery,
The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece (1961) 268, pl. 54,
n. 15; D. Adamesteanu, “Contributo della aerofototeca
archeologica del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione alla
soluzione di problemi di topografia antica in Italia,”
Tenth Congress of International Society of Photogrammetry, Commission VII (1964) 62-63 fig. 11; G. Voza,
Kokalos 14-15 (1968-69) 359-60.
A. DI VITA
